Life

Everyone is born into this world in the same manner and yet leaves this very same world in differing manners. Why is that so? Some would attempt to say that this is all due to everyone having different fates. I don’t want to get drawn into the Fate and Destiny discourse. I rather stay with the idea that Life is a culmination of a series of choices. How your life turns out depends on how good or how bad those choices were.

Every now and then, we are presented with a decision to be made. Accompanying this decision are choices. At certain times, there appears to be only one available and yet at other circumstances, other choices appear to be seemingly out of the realm of possibilities in which one can exercise options.

Choices are like doors. You are presented with doors and you choose which one to go through them. At times when Life seems to be a preordained motion of events, remember this; The door is in front of you. It is up to you to choose whether you would want to go through it or not.

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Last afternoon, someone came over to my residence to do a check on my networking hardware and setup. I expected it to be simple and uneventful; the usual SOPs and the endorsement on the Work Order form and then normal life resumes. Sometimes Life presents surprises in mild ways you never know. I never expect thomas to be such an affable chap. I initially noticed glimpses of his friendliness when he unilaterally doled out url links which are “useful”. Heh

Next he started to gave out tips about optimising my home networking setup. Seems to me at this point that thomas is an overfriendly technician. He started to talk about changing the internet browser from IE8 (which is junk yes i know) to Masthon. By the way, Maxthon is an open source project combining the goodness of FF and Chrome so do-gooders, you know what to do.

The conversation which was barely existent at the onset sputtered into broken phrases, to and fro replies and finally dramatic expressions with animated gestures. What was supposed to be a monologue about TCP/IP, SN margins and whatsnot erupted into talk about the garmen, current affairs and cars! Sweeeeeeeet, i love talking about cars.

Turns out thomas just scrapped his old starlet and is just getting about finding a COE car. Our interesting conversation was peppered appropriately with comments like “hmmm, your internet connection is back on par now”, “oh i hear the thunder, inclement weather can affect DSL connectivity due to charge buildup in the atmosphere affecting the phone exchange cabinet” bla bla bla

What was supposed to be a 20-minute appointment ballooned into almost 3 hours LOL.I think he did mentioned in a subsequent conversation with my mum that he felt that there is affinity with me when i started talking. Haha. When he mentioned that, i decided that maybe friends do turn up at your doorsteps on a nondescript morning without invitation. Indeed, it was the case and we agreed unanimously to adjourn for lunch.

We go to school and we acquire school friends. Through life’s twists and turns, we collect friends and acquaintances through the common social spaces that we frequent. And with that, we acquire workplace friends, [insert place of worship] friends etc. As a matter of fact, we make friends while going through the routine of achieving whatever we were trying to do in our tenure at the said social space. Once the tenure has ended, one moves on. What decides whether those friends will continue to be friends?

Many a times i see people trying real damn hard to keep friendships together and it is clear that this is really a difficult enterprise. The reason behind this is that with the passage of time, one’s life changes and so does one’s circumstances and priorities in life. If the notion of these friendships do not remain relevant in one’s life, then it will simply wither and die. I don’t believe in sustaining an initiative which is incapable of surviving independently. We are again back to the debacle of euthanasia vs. keeping  a brain dead patient alive on a life support machine.

If things are meant to be, they will be.